Editorial: SF Board of Supervisors must pass fire sprinklers bill

Jiu Yin Tong, 79, looks out from a 3rd floor fire escape at his SRO at 937 Clay Street on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2017 in San Francisco, Calif. San Francisco supervisor Aaron Peskin has legislation to require fire sprinklers on the ground floors of SRO buildings.

Photo: Paul Kuroda, Special to The Chronicle

After an epidemic of residential fires, San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced legislation to require new owners of single-room-occupancy hotel buildings to install sprinkler systems for fire prevention.

Since 2001, sprinkler systems have been mandatory for the residential portions of these buildings — but not on the ground floor, where fires in restaurants and other commercial spaces have sparked fires that have led to deaths, damage and displacement all over San Francisco.

It’s time to close the loophole.

“I have not been able to determine from the record why that didn’t happen in the final legislation” in 2001, Peskin said.

His legislation will be voted on by the Board of Supervisors this month. The next stop is a committee meeting Monday. It’s only the first step in a necessary process to improve residential fire safety.

The law would apply only to residential hotel buildings. These buildings tend to be older and lacking the preventative design and materials that have become mandatory for newer construction in San Francisco. There are more than 300 of these buildings in San Francisco, with some 19,000 rooms. Peskin’s legislation would apply only at the time of the sale or transfer of the buildings.

“To be honest with you, it’s kind of a half step,” Peskin said of his proposal. “I would have preferred to require it of all nonresidential spaces now, but the reality is these buildings turn over over time, about 10 percent a year. So it’s a fair way of doing it. That would mean over a 10-year period, it would all get done.”

The reason for this limitation is a practical one: Sprinkler systems can be quite expensive, running to the tens of thousands of dollars. Peskin is seeking to avoid an outcry from the business community about cost, guessing that it will be harder for new building owners to plead poverty when they’re already spending a (presumably large) sum of money.

The Board of Supervisors should pass the legislation, while understanding that it will only chip away at the problem.

“It’s the last vestige of truly affordable housing stock in the city ... and we’ve seen fire after fire,” Peskin said.

Protecting residents from dangerous fires will require more vigilance — and possibly a stronger bill down the line. But this measure represents an important advancement in fire safety.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.